QnA was originally designed to provide quality answers to search engines, Live Search in particular, but the Community wants and needs more than informational questions. So based on feedback from the QnA Community, the team has decided to make it possible for you to easily ask and see the types of questions you are personally interested in. This isn’t going to happen overnight but they have already opened up the site for a broader range of questions. Effective immediately “Conversational” questions will be allowed on the site as long as you tag them with the word conversational.

What is a Conversational Question

To help you in understanding what a conversational question is we’ve divided the types of questions into two broad categories – Conversational and Informational.

In general, when you’re seeking social interaction and sharing, that’s Conversational. It’s important to note that Conversational is more than just “chat.” You can be looking to gain knowledge and information through a conversational question… the key difference is that you don’t need the information to help you make a decision or accomplish a task.

Conversationalquestionsinclude:

Plain old curiosity

You’re taking the “pulse” of the community (just to see what people think)

Political, religious, philosophical, and other debates

Sharing personal news

Jokes and other fun

Any question to or about another QnA member

Speculation

When you’re looking for a factual answer or for opinions that will help you accomplish a task or make a decision, that’s Informational.

When you ask an informational question we recommend that in the question details you include the task that you’re trying to accomplish or the decision you’re trying to make. That will help you get better, more useful answers, and it will lessen the chance that the community will misunderstand your intent and report your question for abuse.

Informational questions include:

Fact finding

Product recommendations to help you decide on a purchase

Technical support to help you get something to work properly

Advice to help you decide what to do

When in doubt of the type of question you are asking it’s best to tag it conversational.

Note: Other than allowing chats and discussions under the Conversational question umbrella the Code of Conduct remains intact.

More information on How to Ask and Tag a Conversational Question can be found on the QnA Team Blog, specifically in this post. If you have comments or questions about Conversational questions please post them on this thread in the QnA forum.